The Muse of Gym Bleachers and Bathroom Stalls
by Katta
Summary: During their Junior year of high school, Nathan makes a discovery about Duke that has far-reaching consequences.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's note:Thanks to Roseveare and Jadelennox for the beta._

* * *

Nathan had drunk three cups of coffee in the morning to be as alert as possible for the English test first period. The plan backfired, as his hands were shaking and he spent the last third of the test trying desperately to ignore his bladder. They weren't allowed to leave early, so he ended up checking and double-checking his answers, while his mind was occupied with the slowly-expanding fluid in his body. It was enough to make him miss his childhood condition, though if he was honest with himself, if he'd still not had a sense of touch he'd most likely have ended up peeing all over the floor.

The thought of _that_ was so mortifying that the last uncertain answer remained uncertain, and when the bell rang, he flinched in surprise despite having waited for it for so long. He handed in the test and rushed to the bathroom, ignoring the school rule about running in the hallway.

There was no-one else in there, so Nathan stepped into the nearest stall, barely giving himself the time to lock behind him before he got right down to business.

He was almost done when there was a low moan from a nearby stall, followed by a hushing sound. At this point, he couldn't just stop cold, but he listened carefully as he finished up and slowly walked over to the sinks. More people were coming into the bathroom at this point, and if there were any more sounds from the stall he couldn't hear them, but he doubted it, because _that_...

That wasn't an "ow, I've got a stomach ache" sound, that was pleasure. And sure, the most likely scenario would be someone taking a little time to themselves to jerk off, but there had been that hushing, too. Two people. Someone had brought a _girl_ in there, and he couldn't help feeling impressed with the nerve. Who was it, thought? A senior, or someone he knew, even? Nobody had study hall first period, so whoever it was had skipped class, yet come to school first thing anyway. There were a group of guys who did that with some regularity, and some of those were the type who might get a girl to skip class in order to have semi-public sex.

He took his time washing his hands as he watched the stall, and was stunned to see Kenny Edwards, from senior class, step out of it, all flustered, quickly closing the door behind him.

"Uh, the flush is broken," he stammered, his back to the door.

"Don't worry, Edwards, no-one wants to see your crap," one of the other guys said, and Kenny slunk away. The door behind him was now locked, though nobody but Nathan seemed to notice. Whoever the girl was, she took care not to be seen.

Nathan stood back, frowning. Kenny Edwards? That didn't fit at all. Sure, Kenny was good looking, in a way, and a step or two above Nathan on the social ladder, but he was straight-laced and preppy as anything. The thought of him skipping class for sex in the bathroom... the only explanation would have to be that the girl put him up to it. But it would have to be a hell of a girl to get Kenny to agree, and what would a girl like that want with _Kenny_?

While others came and went, Nathan remained by the sinks, doing his best to look like he wasn't just lounging about. Passing time was almost over and he hadn't even picked up his textbook, but he was too curious to leave. As time progressed, the bathroom cleared of people once again. The lock on the mysterious stall turned, and Nathan stared into the mirror, waiting for...

Duke Crocker. Nathan's head spun as Duke sauntered up to the sinks and started washing his hands like nothing strange had been going on at all. For a moment, Nathan wondered if he'd been staring at the wrong door, but no, that was the one. And Duke hadn't been to class. He only ever showed up when he felt like it and was just as likely to be found smoking in the schoolyard, or sleeping on the sofa outside the music room, if he wasn't down at the docks skipping school altogether.

Yes, Duke was exactly the kind of guy who'd rather have sex in the bathroom than take the English test, but...

Their eyes met in the mirror, and Duke raised his eyebrows at Nathan, who was still staring.

"Gonna be late for class, Nate," he drawled.

Nathan licked his lips but could do nothing about his dry throat. "You weren't in English," he said. It came out accusatory, though the accusation he really wanted to make was _what the fuck were you doing with Kenny Edwards?_

Duke looked amused. "So?"

"We had a test."

"Good thing I missed it, then." Duke watched him in the mirror, then turned around to watch him in person. "What's going on, Nathan?"

They were alone now, all the stalls empty, and Nathan croaked, "You and Kenny Edwards?"

A hard glint showed in Duke's eyes, as if he was wondering if it would be worth the trouble to dunk Nathan in the toilet. Nathan ignored his instinct to back off and raised his chin in defiance instead. He'd never been beaten up by Duke Crocker – not really, not a proper beating – and he wasn't about to start now.

"So what?" Duke growled.

"Well... you..." Nathan started, wondering how to answer _so what?_ when his mind was still stuck on _what?_

Duke watched him quietly for a moment, and then lowered his shoulders. "Kenny's a nice guy. You want to fuck things up for him?"

That got Nathan thinking. This was definitely dynamite information, and it didn't take a whole lot of imagination to figure out what would happen if it became public knowledge. It could end up making high school living hell for them – well, Kenny at least, because Nathan suddenly realized that Duke, if push came to shove, would probably just stop going altogether. And even if he'd been the type to rat on his classmates, which he wasn't, whatever Duke might think, he didn't want that for either of them.

"No, of course not," he said honestly.

"Well, then," Duke said and, after a moment, flashed him a grin. "I figure I can trust you, Wuornos. That's something I always did like about you. Now, run along. You don't want to keep teacher waiting."

Glancing down at his watch, Nathan noticed how late he was and headed for the door, only to pause and ask Duke, "You're in my French class too, aren't you? Are you coming?"

"French?" Duke said. "Ugh. Screw that."

Nathan couldn't really blame him. French with Mlle Deveraux was a drag. Still, he asked, "Why do you even come to school, if you don't go to class?"

"For the extracurriculars, obviously," Duke said with a wink.

Nathan blushed, and Duke laughed.

"I'll see you in math. Now get, before Mlle Deveraux becomes très irritée."

Caught up in the laugh, Nathan was chuckling as well on his way through the hallway, though he made sure to put the proper expression of contrition on his face before he reached class.

In Duke's best moments – which were admittedly few and far between – he was ridiculously easy to like. It wasn't hard to imagine Kenny Edwards falling for that, even if the thought of Duke Crocker with _guys_ still made Nathan's head spin.

* * *

In time, Nathan should have been able to get over the encounter, but instead it just grew in his mind. He found himself trying to picture exactly what had gone down in that bathroom. It would have to have been a blow job, wouldn't it? The stall was surely much too cramped for anything else, and that moan had been too intense for kissing. Or at least any kissing he'd ever known. Maybe kissing Duke was different, and why was he spending any time thinking about _that_?

That wide grin... the way that mouth curved. He thought of Duke's mouth around Kenny's cock, but couldn't quite see it in his head. The other way around was easier to imagine. But that hushing, you couldn't hush like that while blowing someone, or moan either. Maybe they'd just been using hands.

There were half a dozen different scenarios running through Nathan's head, and it made seeing Duke again really awkward. Any time they bumped into each other in class or the hallway, Nathan didn't know which way to look, and he thought with irritation that it was almost like Duke was keeping _his_ big dark secret rather than vice versa. And was Duke going to more classes these days, or did it just seem like it?

The locker room was obviously the most awkward. Duke wasn't a jock by any stretch of the imagination, but he did well enough in PE when he deigned to show up, and his attitude in the shower was mostly one of detached disinterest. Maybe he'd crack a joke or two with Jeff McShaw or Jack Driscoll or some other of his friends, but mostly he'd just get into the showers and out without any kind of fuss, before disappearing to wherever he went. Sometimes he didn't show up until most of the others were done, and Nathan remembered rumors of what was sometimes going on behind the bleachers, but Duke seemed unperturbed.

How could he play it so cool? Nathan wondered. He stole sideways glances and thought, _Duke Crocker likes guys_, but you sure couldn't tell by the way he acted. There were no hard-ons or longing looks or anything like that, barely even the kind of tomfoolery the other guys got up to. It was like he wasn't even there – and maybe that was the way he coped.

Sometimes Nathan wondered if he'd imagined the whole thing, but no, Duke had practically admitted it, and Nathan knew he hadn't imagined _that_. Duke was definitely... well, not gay, unless those girls he hung with were some elaborate ruse. But he was definitely into guys, or into having his cock blown by guys. That thought made Nathan's gaze slip to where it shouldn't. Catching himself, he looked away, but not before seeing Duke throw him a long glance and a wink, which, _no_. They weren't having this secret together, not him and Duke Crocker of all people, his dad would kill him at the mere idea.

Still, even outside of PE, just having Duke in class was distracting. When Duke was absent, it was a little bit easier, though Nathan still kept wondering where he was, and what he was doing... and who _with_.

Then there was the time after the math test when Mr. Cavanaugh put the results up and Nathan stared at the three names on top, Duke third, and two names above his own, the difference between an A- and a B+. It wasn't even that surprising. Practically everyone in class thought Mr. Cavanaugh was a mean old bastard, but Duke for some reason seemed to enjoy his cold sarcasm and could be more or less relied upon to show up in his class.

If he'd happened to do better than Nathan on the test, so what? Nathan might be striving to do well in school, but he wasn't _that_ competitive. Sometimes Duke turned up for a test after missing half the classes and still passed, and that irked Nathan to no end. Math wasn't like that. Most likely, Duke had actually studied, and him getting a good score was just fair play. The score wasn't what bothered Nathan this time. Duke's name, in black and white on the page, was.

"Crying for your B plus, Nate?" Duke asked from barely inches away, hand landing on Nathan's shoulder, causing him to jump back.

"Maybe I should get you to tutor me," Nathan said, keeping his voice as steady as he could.

Duke laughed, his breath tickling Nathan's cheek."Yeah, that's something I'd want to do. Sorry, I only ever tutor people as a sexual service. Isn't that right, Jeannine?" he called across the classroom.

Jeannine rolled her eyes. "Shut up, Duke." But she didn't sound displeased. Doing it with just anyone could give a girl a bad reputation, but everyone had pretty much accepted Jeannine casting Duke as the Judd Nelson to her Molly Ringwald.

That hadn't been an invitation, Nathan thought as he went back to his desk. It couldn't have been, just a jerkass joke to embarrass him. Except all he'd have to do was say, "Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you, Duke? If you and Kenny Edwards are quite done with each other," and then ball would have been set rolling.

What the hell kind of game was Duke playing? It came dangerously close to flirting, and Nathan hadn't given him any reason to believe _that_ would be welcome. Had he?


	2. Chapter 2

The English assignment changed everything once again, and even more drastically this time. They were supposed to write sonnets, which was one of those things that made even the more ambitious kids in class groan in disdain, for fear of losing coolness points otherwise. Yet the next week, as the students handed in their homework, Duke gave Mrs. Manning a whole bunch of papers.

"Here," he said when she didn't immediately take them.

She looked up, frowning. "What's this?"

"My homework," he said. "I made a full crown. It would have been a redoublé, but..." He shrugged.

"You made a whole crown?" she asked. The shocked tone in her voice was warranted. Duke rarely did any homework, especially not in English, and for him to go above and beyond was unheard of.

"In the style of Shakespeare's finest," Duke said with a smirk. "Except with Italian rhymes. I liked that better."

"Well, thank you, Duke," she said feebly, adding the papers to the pile. "Thank you very much."

Nathan wasn't the only one waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Duke to geek out over something as uncool as poetry, there had to be a joke buried somewhere.

As they got started on the next page of the textbook, detailing other types of verse, the class waited, eyes on the homework pile, while Denise as the chosen student read the introductory paragraphs out loud in an even flatter voice than she usually mustered for such tasks. Yet it wasn't until a full fifteen minutes into the class, when everyone got started on the questions on the second half of the page, that Mrs. Manning picked up the pile and started reading.

"Duke Crocker!"

As expected as the exclamation had been, it was still sharp enough to make the class jump. Little red spots had appeared in her otherwise pale face.

"How dare you!?" she cried, voice shivering with rage. "Go to the principal's office at once! No – I'll take you myself. Nathan Wuornos, you have the class."

Nathan took the desk while Duke followed Mrs. Manning out the door, a certain smug satisfaction over his posture, but with a blank face until he passed Nathan and gave him a wink.

The class remained in gravelike silence as the two left, and then erupted in discussion about what, exactly, had been written on those papers.

"It must have been something dirty," Joe said. "Did you see that look on her face?"

"Maybe he was insulting her," Nicole suggested.

"Nah, she wouldn't get that worked up just over an insult."

"Maybe it was a dirty insult." Nicole laughed.

Jeff and Jack, as Duke's closest confidantes, got quizzed, but neither of them had been told anything beforehand. Neither had Jeannine, who was highly peeved about this fact.

Technically, it was Nathan's job to keep the class quiet, but he realized the futility of attempting, and in any case, he wanted to know too.

Hannah Driscoll came up to him, gave him a sweet smile, and asked, "Hey, Nathan, do you want to find out what Duke wrote?"

"Of course," Nathan said. "Why, do you know?" He and Hannah often worked together on group assignments, not just because they were friends, but because, like him, she was serious-minded and disciplined. She wasn't very likely to be in league with Duke, although more likely than her father would have thought.

"No, but I've got a plan. Do you want to help?"

"Sure."

"Good," she said, and punched him in the nose.

Her punch wasn't very strong, but he was caught by surprise and she got him hard enough to make his eyes water.

"What the hell, Hannah?" he asked as the rest of the class cheered her on, the reverend's daughter punching the police officer's son.

"Do you think it's enough?" she asked him, head cocked. "Or should we add something else?"

She raised her hand, and he caught it around the wrist.

"I don't think so," he said.

"Oh, come on, Nathan!" she complained. "It's got to look convincing for Mrs. Manning."

So he let her scratch him in the face, with way too sharp nails, and when Mrs. Manning returned Hannah burst into tears.

"He's such an _asshole_!" she cried, and both of them were sent to the principal's office as well.

Duke wasn't there any longer, but they still had to wait for a while before Principal Rasmussen sent them in. Nathan had feared that Hannah would claim sexual harassment or something else that might get him in real trouble. Instead she just complained again about what a horrible mean asshole he was, and then segued into a rant about her controlling father, with details that might be lies but probably weren't.

Nathan had just started to wonder if those tears were real, when she waved behind Principal Rasmussen's back at the pile of paper on the desk. As the principal handed Hannah a tissue, Nathan salvaged Duke's homework from the edge of the desk and snuck it under his T-shirt.

In the end, Principal Rasmussen gave Hannah a detention slip and told her she mustn't fight, warned Nathan to be more considerate of his classmates, and sent them both back to class.

The papers burned under Nathan's shirt, but he wasn't called back, and during lunch break he and Hannah met by the stairs to read them.

It really was sonnets. Duke's didn't have the easiest handwriting, but he had taken special care with these, and they were legible enough. Nathan's jaw slowly dropped as he read the first one:

"This shit is only good to fill the can.

To give the bard some credit, he was randy.

He'd fuck in dirt and let his ass get sandy.

Yet any four-eyed prude here is a fan.

"Who else? Bimbos named Tiffany or Brandy,

some dickhead boyfriend with a spray-on tan,

who blows himself, like that makes him a man.

And pimply morons, hungering for candy.

"Well, let them all jerk off into a sock.

Give me a quiet beauty, shy but willing,

a pouty mouth wrapped firmly round my cock.

"And while my seed into that throat is spilling,

the line for next in turn goes round the block.

If sex is a small death, I've made a killing."

Hannah gleefully uttered a word that would have had her father reach for the nearest Bible.

"Can you believe it?" she asked, eyes glittering. "Are they all like that?"

They were. Fourteen sonnets, each filthier than the next, each in iambic pentameter with intricate rhymes, the last line of each poem starting the next one.

The truth was, Nathan _could_ believe it. It was both brilliant and incredibly stupid, and very much Duke Crocker.

"We've got to get them photocopied," Hannah said. "Or, no, my dad has a computer. I'll type them up and print duplicates."

Nathan almost choked. "You want to print _that_ on your dad's computer?"

"I so very much do," she said, grinning. "Not while he's home, obviously!"

He looked down on the scribbled words on the page and swallowed. _"Give me a quiet beauty, shy but willing, a pouty mouth wrapped firmly round my cock."_

"Okay," he said. "Save me a copy."

* * *

Hannah made copies not just for Nathan but for the whole school. Neither Principal Rasmussen nor Mrs. Manning seemed to make the connection between them and the abhorred poems now making the rounds in every single class. They probably thought Duke had leaked them himself, despite still being suspended, or that his friends had.

There were threats of severe punishment for anyone found with the poems in their possession, but that didn't deter anyone. On the contrary, they became the number one topic of conversation, with the most burning question being: was the person mentioned in most of the poems an imaginary muse or someone real, and if so, who?

"It's got to be Katie Hughes," Jeff McShaw declared to his little brother Bill, as they sat on a bench outside between classes, Nathan on another one nearby enough to overhear them.

"How do you figure?" Bill asked.

"Because if you look at the fifth sonnet, here, it says:

"My lust is more than just a passing fling,

though you might wish to scorn me and berate

me, when I want to crown myself your king

"and order you to kneel down and fellate

me. Oh, the joy our union could bring!

Your mouth was made for me, you sexy... thing."

""Yeah, so?"

"So it can't be 'thing'. That doesn't fit the rhyming scheme at all.

"It rhymes with 'bring'."

"Yeah, but that's not the way he's written it," Jeff declared. "It's CDC DCD."

"Huh?"

"The last word has to rhyme with 'berate' and 'fellate'. Same with the next section, he uses both of those rhyming syllables again, and it _should_ logically be an '-ate' word in the first line. It's been replaced. Why would he do that, unless the word would give it away? It's got to be a name. Kate."

"You're such a nerd," Bill scoffed, and then, "Give me that. Okay, let's say it's meant to be Kate. Why Katie Hughes?"

"Oh, come on, of course it's Katie Hughes," said Jeff, with a finality that encompassed Katie Hughes' entire personality and reputation.

Nathan's heart started to pound, and he sat dazed as the other guys debated the likelihood of various other Kates:

"Kate Johnson."

"Too prim!"

"Maybe he likes them prim! All right, Kate Ashton."

"A freshman, seriously?"

"But have you _seen_ her?"

All the while, Nathan couldn't help thinking that Kate wasn't the only name that rhymed.

His copy of the sonnets was hidden under his mattress. He'd taken his own laundry down to the washing machine ever since Mom died, so there was no real risk of Dad finding them there. Every now and then, he'd take them out and read them through, even though he'd already learned many of the lines by heart. He stared at the words, willing them to reveal the identity of the muse, if she – or he, there was nothing to indicate it had to be a girl, whatever the others thought – really existed. Maybe Duke was just screwing with all their heads.

Considering everything else Duke had pulled, most of the students expected him to get expelled this time, but after a week's suspension he was back. Despite having derided most of them in his poems, he was lauded as a hero by the students, thought the teachers' attitude were much frostier.

Mrs. Manning's initial reaction was to call on Duke to answer questions whenever he seemed the most distant, but she tired of it when he turned out to actually know most of the answers, and they reached a silent agreement to pretend that the other didn't exist.

Duke's attendance improved for a little while, which meant that Nathan saw him with uncomfortable regularity, though usually around too many other people to talk. It was a couple of weeks later still, when Duke had already started skipping classes again, that Nathan bumped into him outside the photocopier room and asked: "So, those poems..."

"What about them?" Duke asked, with the face of someone who'd been asked a thousand times but wouldn't really mind being asked a thousand more.

"Are they about anyone in particular?"

"That's the million dollar question, isn't it?" Duke drawled. "What do you think?"

"I think they are." Nathan swallowed. "I'm just not so sure they're about a girl."

Duke watched him in silence, a smile hinting along his lips.

"Because Kate isn't the only thing that rhymes."

"I know a lot of rhymes," Duke said.

"Was it...?" Nathan started, but found he couldn't ask the question.

A teacher passed them by, and Nathan held up his hallway pass. She threw Duke a glance, but didn't say anything.

"Get your duties done like a good boy, Nate," Duke said, and Nathan wasn't sure if the tinge of disappointment in his voice was just wishful thinking. "And when you think of a way to finish that sentence, you let me know, all right?"


	3. Chapter 3

The following day was Friday, and Nathan remained tense the whole school day, wondering what to do if he and Duke were once again alone in a room, but that didn't happen. At the weekend, whatever he did just seemed pointless, and he drifted around with no aim or purpose until his father snapped at him to find something useful to do or at the very least stop wearing a hole in the floor.

Monday, Nathan skipped French for the first time all year, and went to find Duke.

He turned out to be lying quite visibly on the tennis court with his head against the net, smoking a cigarette. Nathan hovered above him for a while, but when Duke didn't react he sat down on the ground.

"What were you and Kenny Edwards doing, that day in the bathroom?"

Duke took out the cigarette and laughed.

"How long has _that_ question been burning? Sorry, Nathan, I don't kiss and tell."

"Or do anything else and tell?" Nathan asked.

"That's right."

Nathan stroked his hand across the asphalt, as if he could smooth it out with his touch. It also gave him something to look at that wasn't Duke.

"Do you kiss and... show, then?"

There was a low, husky quality to Duke's voice now. "What exactly are you asking here, Nathan?"

"You know what I'm asking," Nathan said, daring to look up. "And if you're going to say no, then you can just say it and stop playing these stupid games."

Duke stood up, brushed the dirt off his pants, and held out a hand, smiling. "Well, come on, then."

Nathan stared at the outstretched hand, and then at Duke's face, seeing for the first time that his eyes were beautiful. You didn't really notice his eyes right away – they were kind of narrow and the rest of his features took over – but they were, they were beautiful.

He took the hand and hauled himself up. For a moment, Duke held on, and Nathan had time to wonder if they were actually supposed to _hold hands –_ and then Duke let go like flicking away a dirty sock, and walked two steps ahead of him back to the school building.

They locked themselves in the exact same stall in the exact same bathroom, and Duke put his arms around Nathan's neck.

"This is only the initial demonstration," he said. "I'll show you the rest later."

"I thought you didn't do tutoring," Nathan said, eyes fixed on Duke's mouth.

"Only as a sexual favor," Duke replied, and kissed him.

Nathan's previous experience in kissing hadn't been bad, as such. Some experimentation with Hannah, "for fun" as she dubbed it, a shy goodbye kiss after a date with Rebecca Rafferty – and there was that time Nicole had kissed him in primary school, but that didn't even count. Not a long list, but enough that he could tell the difference with someone who knew what they were doing. Duke knew what he was doing to such an extent that Nathan wondered if he should feel anxious about his own skills, but there was no room in his head to feel anything but _good_. He felt so damned good, and grabbed hold of Duke's hair, pulling him closer, to get more. Their bodies pressed together, and Nathan found that if the sight of naked guys in the locker room wasn't enough to get Duke aroused, the _touch_ of another guy was another matter entirely.

The sound of the outer door opening was followed by footsteps going to one of the stalls, and Nathan froze. Duke broke off the kiss, grinning, and glanced down at Nathan's pants, which revealed a little too much at the moment.

"Wait," he mouthed, and when he judged Nathan adequately recovered, he unlocked the door and gently pushed him out of the stall, with a final pat on the ass.

Nathan closed the door behind him and heard the slight click as Duke locked. Facing the indifferent expressions of the other students, he licked his lips and said, "Uh... the flush is broken again."

Nobody questioned him. Someone muttered, "That toilet always breaks down," and on his way out, Nathan laughed quietly to himself, wondering if Duke was responsible for all of those supposed breakdowns.

* * *

Nathan obviously hadn't expected to be treated as Duke's boyfriend, or given the kind of public recognition girls like Jeannine were, but it was still disconcerting the next time he saw Duke and was met with cocky indifference. Was that the way it was going to be, then? Duke hadn't said anything about the make-out session in the bathroom being a one time deal only, but he hadn't said that it _wasn't_, either.

That gave Nathan plenty of time to fret about what had happened and what it meant, not just for him and Duke together, but for _him_, because if kissing Duke felt so good and he couldn't stop thinking about it, then he'd have to be gay, right? Or bisexual at the very least and both of those were, well, they weren't things you wanted to be in Haven High School. Nathan wondered if this meant he should rethink his opinions on everyone else in class, and he sat studying everyone, trying to figure out if he really liked the girls best like he'd always assumed, or it was just something he'd fooled himself into thinking.

Denise was commonly considered the prettiest, and he'd never liked her. Maybe that was an indication of something, but then Denise was so horrible to people that it kind of took over. Jeannine tried to tag along with Denise, but didn't have it in her to be as relentlessly mean, which of course made her more appealing, but still, Nathan had never really felt anything there beyond appreciation of a nice exterior. There was Hannah, of course, his partner in crime. His kisses with Hannah had been nice, he really liked Hannah, but he wasn't sure he _liked_ liked her. And then there was Nicole, oh, Nicole was gorgeous and funny and someone he'd dreamed of more than once, but he couldn't deny that even she didn't set his heart racing the way Duke currently did.

Having gone through the rest of the girls in a similar fashion, he turned his attention to the boys, and the thought of doing anything at all with the likes of Paul, Chaz, Joe and the others was enough to put anyone off sex. Now, Jeff, maybe, Jeff was good looking, though rather Bill than Jeff, in that case, even though he was a year and a half younger. They were both Duke's friends, and he was a little surprised that Duke hadn't gone for one of them rather than Kenny, but then maybe they weren't into that. Or maybe they _had_ and he just never knew... there seemed to be so much he didn't know. On a scale of things, he'd probably rate Bill the same as Hannah, which was lower than Nicole, and so much lower than Duke it wasn't even funny.

The truth was, there wasn't anyone he wanted the way he wanted Duke. At mealtime he sat picking at his food until his father sighed and asked, "And what's wrong with you today?"

"Nothing," Nathan muttered, wondering what would happen if he said, _Well, dad, I've been making out with Duke Crocker, and I would very much like to do that again, not to mention any other thing you can do with a guy, except he hasn't asked me to and I'm too scared to ask again._ Nothing good, that was for sure. He wondered what his dad thought of gays – they'd never really talked about it. Maybe he'd rant and rave, but he probably wouldn't kick Nathan out the way that girl who'd graduated last year got kicked out by her parents.

Of course, the guy in question being Duke Crocker was another matter altogether. Stay away from the Crockers, that was a mantra he'd heard since he was five, and yet somehow he and Duke had always returned to the same circles. Been friends, even, from time to time, mostly when they were little and it wasn't so glaringly obvious that they didn't fit together. Of course, half the time Duke had been a dick to him, like that time with the tacks, but the other half he'd been great, you just never knew what you were going to get from one day to another. If Duke wanted nothing more to do with him, it was probably easier in the long run. Nathan wasn't so sure he _wanted_ to want Duke, but that did nothing to stop the longing.

And then, after PE on Friday, just as Nathan was starting to dread the locker room, Duke threw a soccer ball at the back of his head.

"Keep up, Wuornos!" he said.

Nathan stopped and stared at Duke, who picked up the ball and then slowly stood back up, giving a discreet but pointed glance towards the bleachers.

The area behind the bleachers, although cramped and dusty, was a prime spot for couples to meet. Nathan's mouth got dry and his hands clammy, and though he didn't dare to nod, he blinked in confirmation. As the rest of the class went into the locker rooms, he drifted behind, waiting for the right moment before slipping into the hidden area.

Duke wasn't there yet, and Nathan waited anxiously until he spotted the familiar form slinking in. There were still sounds of people around, and Nathan wondered what would happen if someone else decided to have some make-out time.

Right then, Duke leaned in and caught his mouth in a kiss. Nathan choked down the surprised sound he wanted to make, and though kissing Duke with all those people passing by outside was scarier than kissing him in that locked stall, the pleasure of it took over. He breathed in Duke's scent, and after fumbling a bit with his hands, found the perfect spot around the hips, just above the ass, to pull in closer.

Letting go of the kiss, Duke nibbled at Nathan's ear and whispered softly: "Are you ready for the next lesson?"

"Here?" Nathan asked breathlessly.

Duke's hand moved down to the front of Nathan's shorts. "Can you keep quiet?"

With the sensation of Duke's fingers brushing against his crotch it sure wasn't easy, but Nathan clenched his teeth and nodded.

"For how long?" Duke breathed, moving his hand into Nathan's shorts.

As it turned out, Nathan could keep quiet for what felt like centuries, while the gym cleared out and Duke jerked him off. Careful as they were, a tell-tale stain still formed on the fabric, and while Nathan tried desperately to wipe it off, Duke just smiled and shook his head, pulling in for another kiss.

They continued their activities, quietly, yet ending up more sweaty and breathless than PE had managed.

"There," Duke eventually said in a rough voice and broke off. "Everyone's gone. Time to hit the showers."

After they had shed their clothes and stepped in the showers, Duke kept his hands to himself, which was both understandable – someone might still come in – and really frustrating. Without anyone else present, Nathan at least permitted himself to look, in ways he hadn't dared before.

Duke naked was a dizzying sight, mostly because it meant _more Duke_. More to hold and kiss, some other time, and that dick they hadn't even started on, but which was definitely ready for it, at least until Duke changed the temperature and let a spray of cold water take care of the problem.

Basking in the attention, Duke returned the gaze, letting his eyes roam over Nathan's body in ways that were almost as effective at setting his skin on fire as touches. Nathan took a page out of Duke's book and let the water run cold, calming his excited senses.

And then, just like that, it was over. Duke got out, got dressed, and left without so much as a goodbye. The only thing left for Nathan to do was follow suit, with a rising sense of disappointment and the knowledge that he'd be late for class again.

Stomach bug. He could always blame it on a stomach bug – and if those bugs were more like butterflies, who was to know?

* * *

It didn't take long for Nathan to grasp the routine. Coldness or sometimes even meanness from Duke, interspersed with the occasional muttered command: "Boiler room, ten minutes" or "after school, behind the fish smoking house." In a way, it wasn't that different from when they'd been kids and you had to gauge Duke's likely mood from the level of his father's drunkenness.

Yet familiar as it might be, it wasn't satisfying. Over the weeks, Nathan got intimately acquainted with every part of Duke's body, but all he could hope for in-between was the rare smirk or wink. They didn't talk. He certainly wasn't among Duke's friends. For all the difference it made to their interactions, he could have been Kenny or Jeannine or just about anyone, and it wasn't enough. Heck, Duke _still_ flirted with Jeannine in class, though he never so much as mentioned Kenny. Whether that meant he'd broken it off Nathan didn't know and didn't dare to ask.

In all fairness, Nathan reminded himself, Duke had never promised anything else. Even if those sonnets _were_ meant for him, they'd only spoken of lust, not of... well, other stuff.

"I got a call from the school that you've been missing classes," his dad said one evening. "_And_ been tardy several times this month. You got anything to say for yourself?"

Nathan looked down and shrugged.

"Just lost track of time, I guess."

"Well, that's not good enough. When you're out of school and get a job, they don't want to hear that you 'lost track of time', and they won't have any bell to remind you, either. Grow up, Nathan! Next time I get a call like this, I'm gonna ground you."

Nathan imagined himself saying: _Duke and I have been meeting up in secret so I can blow him. I'm late all the time because we have to make sure no-one can see us. Once we were almost caught out by another couple, but Duke had this joint, so we lit it and pretended we'd gone down to the boiler room to get high, instead of getting off. That's right, dad, I used illegal drugs as a ruse to cover up that I'm giving head to Duke Crocker. And I __**like**__ it. I like it more than anything I've ever done in my life, and that's not even the worst of it. The worst of it is, I'm in love with him. I'm so in love it hurts._

Taking a towel down from the wall, Nathan muttered, "Yes, sir," and started drying the dishes.

He was well aware that the situation couldn't hold, though. Much more of this and his grades would be in danger. Even if he'd be willing to risk that, someone might make the connection between his absences and Duke's – even if Duke was gone often enough that it might cover things up.

It was with a pounding heart that he suggested to Duke that they should stick to the lunch hour and after school, but though Duke gave him a condescending smirk, he didn't argue the point.

"Three o'clock, the hunting tower," he said instead, and Nathan got to discover the rickety joy of sex ten feet off the ground in a none-too-sound wooden structure, but at least they had some privacy, and, despite the wobbliness, some fun.

Emboldened by this, Nathan wondered if he could push Duke into some social interaction. Nothing too ambitious such as acknowledging him in school or anything like that, just a bit of actual talking. So one day, in response to Duke's "same time tomorrow," he responded:

"I have to do my homework."

Duke rolled his eyes. "_Oh_. Well, whatever."

"We could do it together," Nathan said, and then, seeing Duke's expression, cursed himself for coming up with the dumbest idea known to man, because asking Duke to study was like asking Hannah's dad to come smoke some joints.

But then Duke smiled – not even a smirk – and asked, "Do you want me to tutor you?"

"I guess I do," Nathan said, smiling back.

"Very well, then. My place tomorrow."

With that, Duke walked away, his back looking more relaxed and devil-may-care than usual, but Nathan, waiting behind so they wouldn't be seen together, was feeling just as triumphant.


	4. Chapter 4

When they were kids, Nathan had always felt awkward coming home to Duke, especially if his dad was around. The contrast to his own home was too jarring, and Duke had been so ornery, like he didn't know whether to apologize for the place or defend it. But things had changed a lot since then, and it had been a long time since Nathan had felt anything like happy in his own house. Besides, Duke's grandmother's house was a lot nicer than his father's had been, not tidy like in a TV commercial or anything, but still with clear evidence that someone was taking care of it.

The awkwardness now was of another nature altogether, as Duke stepped inside, before pulling him up the stairs and calling down to the old woman watching TV in the living room: "This is Nathan, he's come to study."

Nathan had expected the kind of grilling his dad would initiate whenever he brought a new friend home, but the woman only raised her eyes from the screen for a few seconds and then turned her attention back to _The Price Is Right_.

"Does she know you don't really study?" Nathan asked, looking around Duke's bedroom. It was neater than he would have imagined, but sparsely decorated, with a ship in a bottle and an old lithograph of an icy coast as the only embellishment. The single bookshelf unit actually had books on it, which was a surprise.

"That batty old hag," Duke scoffed. "You think she cares? When the teachers call her in, she gets mad at me, tells me I'm grounded, then the next day I do my thing as usual and she doesn't even notice. Believe me, she won't be a problem."

He closed the door and pulled Nathan in for a kiss. Nathan melted into it, his body ready to take up their usual activities, but his brain reminded him that this was supposed to be different, this time he'd get Duke to hang out with him, _talk_ to him, and so he broke off and swung his school bag onto the bed.

"What do we start with?" he asked, getting his books out.

Duke sat down with a sigh. "You're serious. You want to study."

"We can do my homework if you don't want to do yours."

That earned him a laugh. "All right. What have you got?"

"Math?" Nathan suggested, figuring he should go with the safe choice.

To his surprise, Duke groaned and threw his head back on the bed, which exposed a neck that Nathan had trailed with kisses so many times... and this was _not_ the time to think about that.

"Can't we lead up to math with something, you know, lighter?"

"I thought you liked math."

Duke sat up on his elbows and stared at him. "Why would you think that?"

"Because you actually do it. Unlike pretty much everything else."

"I like Mr. Cavanaugh," Duke said. "He expects me to do it, so I do it."

"Mr. Cavanaugh is a jerk," Nathan pointed out.

Affronted, Duke sat up. "Why, because he doesn't hold our hands and treat us like retarded toddlers like the rest of them?"

There was so much heat in that question that Nathan was dumbstruck, wondering what on earth made Duke take the comment so personally.

Duke traced patterns into the blanket on his bed and didn't meet Nathan's eyes when he at last broke the silence.

"He stood up for me. I talked to Becca, her dad's on the staff. She said they were debating whether to expel me, and Mr. Cavanaugh said, 'He did the assignment, fourteen times over. If all we can do with a smart kid like that is kick him out of school, then what kind of teachers are we?' So they let me stay. For now, anyway." Duke gave a shaky little laugh and shook his head. "Can you believe that he actually called me smart?"

"Why did you do it?" Nathan asked quietly, fighting the lump in his throat.

"Because screw them, that's why."

"No, it isn't. If it were, you wouldn't care what Mr. Cavanaugh said about you."

Duke's lips tightened, and there was another stretch of silence.

"It seemed like fun," he said, eyes still on the blanket. "The way she described the sonnets, how to fit the rhymes together, to make a crown and a redoublé, it sounded like _fun_. Making all the words fit like in a puzzle. Not like all those stupid analyses. 'What are the author's main themes?' Like, ninety percent of the time, the answer is sex, and we're not even supposed to say. Like Shakespeare's too good for sex? _A Midsummer's Night Dream_ is just sex, sex, sex from beginning to end, does she want us to pretend we don't know that? So I figured, I'll make it, I'll make it good, and I'll do it _my_ way, because she doesn't own me. I still wish I could have done the redoublé, but it got too complicated."

Of all the possible answers, Nathan hadn't expected that one, though maybe he should have. He'd always known that Duke wasn't stupid, the work he actually _did_ do in school was proof enough of that, but somehow he'd just accepted that Duke was going to screw up. Was that fair, though? Wasn't the whole point of school to change who you could be?

"Was it worth it?" he asked. "Almost getting expelled?"

"It's gonna happen sooner or later," Duke said with a shrug."I'm a Crocker, right? Gonna end up like my dad – or isn't that what _yours_ always tells you?"

"It doesn't have to be like that."

"No, of course not." Duke looked up with one of his cheeky smiles, though there was a bitter edge to it. "I could be like _you_. Good boy, gets all the work done on time, heart crushed if he gets a B, because he's got to make Daddy proud!"

Nathan felt his cheeks heat. "Screw you," he said, getting off the bed. "You don't know the first thing about my dad!"

"I know he's an asshole. Why are you trying so hard to impress him?"

"At least he gives a shit! It's not like you've got anyone..." Nathan broke off, knowing from Duke's stricken expression that he'd gone too far. "Sorry."

"No, you're right," Duke said with a forced lightness in his voice. "I don't."

Nathan sat back down on the bed, heavily. "You know," he said after a moment's pause. "I asked to do this because I wanted us to talk, but we _suck_ at talking."

"And here I thought we were having the most sparkling conversation!" Duke gave a quivering smile and pulled Nathan closer, kissing the back of his neck.

Silently, Nathan leaned into the touch and let Duke lay them both down on the bed.

"Let's get to it, then," Duke said, reaching for the book pile. "What's this? History. Also known as tall tales from dead people. Oh joy. Today's homework will be done as a game of distraction." His unoccupied hand moved further down Nathan's body. "How many questions can you get right when I distract you?"

* * *

There was no discernible difference in Duke's attitude to Nathan during the schooldays, but just the knowledge that another Duke existed made the cold shoulder a little easier to take. Plus, the lack of interaction or interest made it less obvious when Nathan threw his surreptitious glances. Not often, because Duke usually chose a corner of the classroom out of Nathan's sight, but enough to notice how Duke always talked too much or too little, answered back or not at all, moved around to all his friends or seemed to sleep in his chair. And yet somehow he always seemed to listen and take in what was going on in the classroom. It wasn't the kind of restlessness a kid like Joe would display, because Joe couldn't concentrate if his life depended on it, while Duke could very well do as he was told, and just... didn't. Like the outcome would be the same, either way.

Would it, though? The idea that they were bound to end up like their fathers was unsettling, and Nathan refused to believe it. At home, he dug out old shoe boxes full of photos that had never made it into albums. He watched his mother feed him, hold him, play with him, teach him how to paint with watercolors, how to fold paper and use scissors. She was a part of him too, he had _options_, and so did Duke, there wasn't just one path to take. Still Nathan kept up the hard work in school, because what would be the point of throwing it all away? That didn't mean he was studying to impress his dad, and he definitely didn't have to go to the academy. He could be anything he wanted to be.

If only he could make Duke believe it, too – but he couldn't change Duke, any more than he could stop him from being such an ass around his friends.

One day in class, as Nathan was lost in thoughts like those, Jeff nudged him and whispered, "Psst, Nathan, poll: hottest girl in class?"

Nathan defensively forced his brain to think about girls and replied, "Nicole," before he had time to realize that the safe choice would have been Denise, or Jeannine, or in a pinch Becca. And if he was going to choose someone less noticeable, would Hannah be upset that it wasn't her?

Jeff's eyebrows shot up as he jotted down the answer. "Nicole, huh? You might actually have a chance there. Want me to put in a good word for you?"

"_No_," Nathan replied, but judging by Jeff's smile, he didn't listen.

Sure enough, during lunch hour, just as he was about to slip down to Duke in the boiler room, Nicole came up to him with a smile that was both bashful and pleased.

"I heard you voted for me in that stupid poll," she said.

Nathan silently cursed Jeff and said, "Yeah. I did."

"Well, thanks." She scuffed the toe of her shoe slowly against the floor, and then said, "Thing is, I have a boyfriend."

"Oh, me too," said Nathan, relieved. "I mean, not a boyfriend..."

Nicole laughed. "Okay. Good. But thanks anyway."

"You're welcome."

She moved to leave, but paused and asked, "Is it Hannah Driscoll?"

For a moment, Nathan considered saying yes. Having Hannah as his girlfriend would be easy, safe, and he was pretty sure he could get her to go along with it. But no, he couldn't use Hannah like that, they were supposed to be friends.

"No," he said. "I... you don't know her."

Could she tell that he was lying? If so, she didn't indicate it in any way, just nodded and walked off, leaving him free to go to his not-boyfriend.


	5. Chapter 5

Though the study dates were still few and far between compared to their other activities, Nathan did get over his hesitation at coming to the Crocker house, and learned to ignore Duke's grandmother on the way up the stairs to the bedroom. One day when he arrived, there was a new picture nailed to the wall over the bed, one of those 3D prints showing a jungle. He stared at it for a while, trying to see the hidden animals, until a bored Duke decisively turned his face around and kissed him.

"Get to work, Nathan," he said. "Today's subject is French. Agenouille-toi, ma chérie!"

"I'm pretty sure you mean 'mon cher'," said Nathan, but sank down on his knees as Duke had told him. "And how do you speak French at all? You're never in class."

"Movies," Duke said. "Ouvrez grand la bouche!"

"Like what, Godard?"

"Like all sorts of movies. _Nikita_, _Jean de Florette_, _Zombie Lake_. Have you seen that one? It's really bad. Like _really_ bad, even for a movie called _Zombie Lake_. But I liked _Nikita_, she was badass."

"And in which movie did you learn to say 'kneel and open your mouth wide'?

Duke smirked. "I don't remember."

"So you watch French porn too? Where do you get them?"

"Canadian imports. Less talking, more blowing! We'll hold off the French for later."

Nathan obeyed, though he had a hard time sticking to the task, since Duke chose to express himself in exaggerated French-Canadian porn star exclamations. When he felt Duke ejaculate into his mouth, he pulled back, spat, and finally allowed himself to laugh.

"You're killing me."

"_I'm_ killing _you_? You're the one who kept laughing with my dick in your mouth!"

"You've only yourself to blame." Nathan sat down with his back to the bed and shook his head. "If you want to learn French, why not just go to class?"

"Because I'd be too bored to actually learn anything," Duke said and pulled his pants back up. "Come on, Nate, you don't go there to learn how to speak French, you go to get a grade that says you can speak French. I don't care about that stuff. I want to go to the places they actually do speak French, like Québec, and France..."

"You're gonna use porn phrases in those places?" Nathan asked.

"...North Africa," Duke continued, undeterred. "They speak French in North Africa, don't they?"

"I think they mostly speak Arabic."

"Well, I could learn that too," Duke said, his eyes glittering. "One day, I'll leave this shithole behind, and I'll see it all. Learn from places by _being_ there, not from from some classroom lecture. Start a new life, finally be free. I could learn all sorts of languages. Spanish – that covers all of Latin America."

"Except Brazil, yeah," Nathan said. The thought of Duke leaving felt a bit weird, but it would have to be more than a year down the road, after they graduated, and a lot could happen before then.

"And Russian, and maybe something really out there, like Japanese."

"Why Russian?" Nathan asked, and joked, "Do you want to defect? 'Cause Soviet's not really a thing anymore."

Duke grinned. "Ya govoryu na russkom. I only want to learn more. My mom is Russian, remember?"

The truth was, Nathan barely remembered Duke's mom at all, beyond a vague recollection of having met her once or twice when they were little.

"Do you talk to her often?" he asked and peered up at Duke, though he cursed his curiosity when he saw the grin fade away.

"Hardly ever," Duke said, his expression unreadable.

Nathan tried to picture Duke's mom, but instead raised memories of his own, the old loss welling up inside him with full force. It had been years before he stopped talking to his mom, and she hadn't even been alive to listen. He couldn't imagine what it was like to have a mom who was still there, and not take advantage of that. And as far as the gap between him and his father felt sometimes, at least they _talked_ to each other.

"Do you miss her?" he asked, his voice rougher than he'd have wanted.

Duke stared out the window and answered softly: "I never could understand... yeah, Dad asked for custody, but she didn't have to give it to him. Wade and Aaron's mom didn't. Then after he died, she let Grandma take over... I asked Mom why, and she said, 'You're a Crocker, you should be raised as one.' Like we're the fucking Kennedys. What the hell did Dad ever accomplish except get drunk and treat everyone like dirt? She just never wa..."

He broke off, and when his eyes met Nathan's, it seemed an even chance whose tears would brim over first.

"Do you know who I miss?" Duke asked. "_Your_ mom."

That settled the matter, as Nathan's tears fell, burning and heavy.

"What?"

"She was like one of those TV moms. Like in the winters, when we went playing and she'd make hot chocolate and sandwiches. Sorry." Duke shook his head. "Shouldn't I talk about her?"

"No – do," Nathan pleaded, starved for a conversation he never got to have.

"She made them for all of us," Duke said, his voice filled with wonder. "Not just you. Like we mattered to her."

Nathan remembered those playdates. He remembered the one, in particular, where he'd broken his arm and had to go to the hospital. Mom had been so worried when she arrived, and hugged him as hard as she dared around his cast, but he hadn't been able to feel a thing. The way her hair smelled still lingered in his memory, though, and the little sniffle she tried to hide when she gave him her thank-God-you're-all-right smile. Then she'd turned and given Duke a hug too, for taking him there, and at first Duke had stood with his arms hanging like he didn't know what to do with himself, but then that too-cocky expression had died and he'd hugged back. The memory was so clear, now, and yet Nathan hadn't thought of it in ages.

"She really liked kids," he said.

"Yeah. She was... she was something else." Duke hesitated, and then said, "You know, I don't think I ever told you I'm sorry... for your loss and all that. But I am."

Nathan turned his face away and buried it in the blanket hanging down from the bed. Through the mattress, he could feel Duke shift and slide down to the floor, and then an arm wrapped around his shoulder as Duke settled with his chest against Nathan's back.

They didn't speak or move, yet when Nathan finally got a grip on himself and let go, he felt exhausted. Any further studies were out of the question, and he walked down the stairs with the homework still undone in his backpack.

"Are you Max's boy?"

The old woman had never spoken to him before, and it took Nathan a moment to react and turn around. The TV was on as usual, showing some daytime soap or other, but her attention was entirely on him. He wondered if dhe'd heard what they'd got up to in the bedroom, and squirmed a little at the thought.

"Uh... I'm Nathan Wuornos. I've been studying with Duke."

She raised her eyebrows. "Ellington?"

Was she pulling his leg? Her expression didn't give him any clues either way.

"Your Duke. Your grandson?"

"I know my grandson," she snapped. "Don't be a smartass. If you're studying, why are you down here?"

"We're, uh, done," he said, which was most definitely a lie. "I'm on my way home."

"So go home! Who's stopping you? I'm not stopping you." She waved him off, with a flick of her hand.

There wasn't really any way to counter that, so he mumbled, "Goodbye, Mrs. Crocker," and left.

Outside the house, he stopped to rub away the last puffiness from his eyes and laugh a little at the bizarre conversation. That was the strangest, most heart-wrenching and least productive visit he'd had at Duke's... but somehow, also the best one.

* * *

"Are you coming to Paul's party on Friday?" Hannah asked, intercepting Nathan in the hallway.

Nathan paused to think about it. Most of the time, when guys like Paul had parties, he didn't get invited, which solved the problem of whether to go or not. This time, though, Paul's parents were out of town and the party was open to anyone who brought their own liquor, no invitation needed. Which left only two problems. One was, he had no idea where to get alcohol. The other...

"Dad wouldn't let me anywhere near that party," he said.

Hannah laughed. "Well, you wouldn't _tell_ him. Officially, I'm staying at Jeannine's. A whole bunch of us are. Her sister – who sounds eerily like her mother – is covering for us."

"So you're going?" If Hannah could run a con believable enough to fool _her_ father, Nathan should be able to as well. When it came to suspicions of ongoing vice, even a cop didn't have anything on the reverend. "What about the booze thing?"

"Oh, I've got that covered. I know where my dad hides the whiskey."

His first assumption was that she was joking, but her wicked grin didn't indicate so much joke as juicy secret, and he came to the astounding conclusion that she was telling the truth.

"Whiskey. _Your_ dad?"

"There's a lot you don't know about my dad."

"Clearly. I may have to see this, to believe it."

"I don't think I can find enough for two, though," Hannah said with an apologetic grimace. "But I can at least get Jeannine's sister to cover for you too. I don't think sleepover would work very well, but she could claim to be driving you home. It's twenty bucks a call, but you've got that, right?"

"Yeah."

Would his dad believe a mature-sounding sister pretending to be a mom? Nathan supposed it was worth a try. Further down the hallway, he could see Duke with the McShaw brothers, little Julia Carr on the sidelines, hoping to be included. There were times he felt a lot like that around Duke. It occurred to him that Duke would surely be at the party, and that it was a chance to observe him in another kind of environment.

"I guess I could try," he said.

"Great! I'll feel so much better knowing you're there. I mean, I'll be with the others, no sweat, but if someone is shitty to me you'll punch them, right?"

"Absolutely," he promised. "Likewise?"

She smiled and curled her hand into a fist. "You bet."

Once Nathan had made up his mind, it was a lot easier than he had feared to get permission for the party. Following Hannah's advice, he bribed Jeannine's sister to call his father pretending to be her own mother, and just to make sure, he told her to say that the party was at Robbie's.

His dad seemed to be occupied with some major case, because he didn't react much when Nathan asked about the party. After listening to "Jeannine's mom" on the phone, he asked for the class photo, and Nathan brought it to him.

"Hm," Dad grunted, studying Robbie with a raised eyebrow. "That's the kid?"

Nathan wondered if it was too painfully obvious that Robbie would never host a party – at least not one with any guests – but there was no doubt that his dorky appearance was a lot more trustworthy than Paul's.

The calloused finger moved from Robbie's face to Jeannine's and tapped the page thoughtfully. "Pretty girl."

"Yeah," Nathan said, trying not to fidget under his dad's steady gaze.

"All right, then. Back by midnight, was it? Normally, I would have said eleven, but since Mrs. Atkinson is kind enough to drive you, I suppose it won't hurt to follow her rules, just this once."

Too much relief would be suspicious, but Nathan allowed himself a smile. "Thanks, Dad!"

With that out of the way, alcohol was a minor obstacle by comparison. Nathan chose the obvious course and asked Duke, who agreed without any sign of surprise. On the day of the party, Nathan realized why, when he came to the meeting point and found three other kids already there, nervously fumbling with their illicit gains.

Nathan handed over his money and got a bottle of vodka instead, along with a smile broader and friendlier than Duke usually awarded Nathan around people.

"Pleasure doing business with you, Wuornos. See you tonight!"

"Yeah... see you," Nathan said, wishing everyone would just disappear so he could catch that smile in his mouth. But since they didn't, all he could do was walk away, his excitement about the party a little bit stronger still.


	6. Chapter 6

_Author's note: Jeff McShaw's theory of gravity has also appeared on Swedish comedy show Anders & Måns. Since that show is much younger than the setting of this story, you can assume that Anders & Måns have been hanging with Jeff, or that they came up with the theory independently, whichever you prefer._

* * *

He must have spent half an hour trying to find the right combination of relaxed and cool clothes from his closet, but when Nathan knocked on Paul's door he still felt awkward and underdressed. Nobody made any comments, though, and once Paul looked into his bag with the vodka, he was quickly welcomed and taken inside.

The party had only just gotten started. There was dance music and already quite a crowd, but they were mostly gathered around the still-full snack bowls, using chips and their pay-ticket booze to gain courage. A few had dared to make it onto the dance floor. One of them, he discovered as he came closer, was Hannah.

Her arms were in the air, whiskey bottle in one hand, head thrown back, and she sang along with the music at the top of her lungs: "We're not gonna take it anymoooooore!"

All his nervousness lost, he watched her in fascination, until she noticed him and waved him closer: "Nathan! Come over here, dance with me!"

"Uhm, no. Not just yet." If he was going to make a fool of himself in front of all these people, he wanted plenty of _them_ to be making fools of themselves too. He marvelled at Hannah's fearlessness, but the smell of her breath made him look down at the amount of whiskey left in her bottle, and marvel a little less. "Did you drink all that already?"

"Sshh, Nathan," she whispered, pulling him aside in a doorway. "Of course not. I drank like a mouthful. It was half empty when I found it. But if I pretend that drank half the bottle before even getting here, then I'm drunk and can do whatever I want. Get it?"

He laughed. "Got it."

"Your turn. Where's your booze?"

"No, I..." Though it wasn't such a bad idea, really. He dug out his bottle of vodka, opened it, and took a swig, bracing himself for the taste. To his surprise, it didn't taste like much at all.

"That's it. We can pour a little out, if you want."

After the money he'd paid for it, he most certainly did not want, and he shook his head. Besides, if he was going to dance, he needed more courage than that mouthful could give. He hurried to take one more and then screwed the cap back on. The bottle was only meant to get him into the house, after all, not to get him drunk.

"Suit yourself. Oh!" The music had changed to 'Iko Iko' and Hannah lit up. "I love this song. Do you think I could sing it in church and pretend I'm speaking in tongues?"

"Your dad may be a fossil, but I don't think he's _that_ out of the loop."

"Yeah, you're probably right."

She dragged him back onto the dance floor, and he shoved the bottle of vodka back in his shoulder bag, not daring to wave it around the way Hannah did with hers.

His feet felt too large and his arms too stiff, and he was way too aware of everyone's eyes on them, but he did his best to ignore it all and dance the way Hannah did. After a while, it even worked. More people were joining them on the floor instead of standing around by the snack bowls, and possibly that vodka had finally kicked in too. He even kind of enjoyed himself.

"Jack!" Hannah called out happily.

Sure enough, when Nathan turned around he saw Hannah's cousin Jack arriving, and could spot Jeff McShaw behind him. This made his heart thump in expectation even before he saw the person behind Jeff.

...Duke, with his arm around Becca, resting comfortably as if it had been there for a while. Nathan swallowed, but had little time to think, as Hannah bounced to greet Jack and he had the choice of following her or being left to dance with a bunch of half-strangers. He opted for the former, shoving his sweaty hands in his pockets.

"Hi, Hannah," Jack said with a grin. "Nathan. Party in full force, I see?"

"I'm having a blast!" Hannah declared. "But it's even better with you here. Come dance with me!"

She pulled Jack away before he had a chance to say no, and Jeff looked from them to Duke and Becca, to the various crowds of people in the room. In the end, he shrugged, put his bottle of wine on the table, and joined the others on the dance floor.

This left Nathan with Duke... and Becca, who was looking more amorous by the second. He knew he should leave them be, and yet he hesitated long enough that Duke raised a quizzical, amused eyebrow at him.

"I'll..." Nathan said, and then he turned on his heel and went back to Hannah and the guys, digging the vodka out of his bag for another mouthful. Maybe that would make this clusterfuck all right.

* * *

Even Hannah couldn't dance forever, and somehow as the night went on, they all gathered by the sofa, talking. Nathan sat on the floor with his head against the armrest, facing Hannah and Jeff who had cozied up in a chair. He was a little bit surprised to see that Jeff seemed to keep his hands mostly to himself – somehow that wasn't what he would have expected from a friend of Duke's with a girl practically in his lap.

Jack, Becca, and Duke were sitting on the sofa, which meant that Duke's leg occasionally brushed against Nathan's back. Nathan was grateful not to have to see what they got up to, except on those instances where Duke let go and leaned forward for a swig from his bottle. When he did, Nathan sometimes managed to time his reach for his own bottle, to bring their hands closer together, even touching skin a few times.

Jeff had been sharing Hannah's whiskey as well as his own wine, and was getting very loud and cheerful. "Gravity," he explained, "only exists because of evolution."

Becca laughed. "Even I know that's not right."

"No, no, no, no, hear me out. See, if things fall up, they disappear into space. And die. And can't..."

"Fuck," Duke filled in, sending a shiver through Nathan's body.

"Mate. But things that fall _down_ stay on earth, and can mate. And they spread their genes and are happy."

"What about falling sideways?" Hannah asked with a laugh.

"They fall off the sides. Can't spread their genes. Only gravity things can spread their genes. Evolution."

"Sound scientific reasoning," Duke said, completely deadpan while everyone else was laughing.

"Yes!" Jeff agreed. "Sound... what you said."

He headed into another mock scientific explanation, this time about why bread rises, and Nathan smiled. The floor was rising just like bread, and it tilted in a way that suggested gravity was no longer in effect. The whole thing made his stomach turn, so he closed his eyes, which improved matters.

"Hey, Nathan, are you okay?" That was Duke. Like he actually cared.

"I think he's falling asleep," said Hannah.

"Nathan, seriously." The world shifted as Duke got down on the floor and slapped his face slightly. "Are you okay?"

"Floating off into space," Nathan mumbled.

"Is anyone coming for you, buddy?"

That was a new one. Right then, Nathan wasn't sure of a lot of things, but he was sure they weren't buddies.

"Jeannine's mom," he said and giggled.

"That was our cover story," Hannah said, so close that he peered up and saw that she and Jeff were now crouching above him too.

"Okay, that's it, I'm taking you home," Duke said, and got an arm in under Nathan. It was the closest to an intimate touch they had had all night, and Nathan melted into it, even though he knew he was supposed to stand up.

"Now!?" Becca protested. "Are you kidding me? Just let him sleep it off."

"He's drunk as a skunk and his father's a cop," Duke said. "Be smarter than that."

"Oh, so now I'm stupid?"

Someone else's arm on his other side, and his foggy brain supplied him with Jeff's name. "No, no, I can stand," Nathan protested and did so, though it made everything spin more.

"One step at a time," Duke instructed him.

Having him so close was wonderful, but Nathan still remembered a promise he'd made about tonight. "I can't leave. Got to make sure that no one's shitty to Hannah."

"I've got Jack in here and Jeannine in the kitchen," Hannah said. She sounded way too sober – but then Nathan remembered that she'd been faking it. "I'll be fine."

"Can someone get a glass of water?" Duke asked.

They made it over to the hallway, where Nathan sat down and drank the glass of water that was given to him. It didn't make any difference as far as he could tell, but it was nice to drink something that wasn't vodka.

And then they were out the door, just him and Duke, slowly making their way back to his house along a road that had seemed a lot more even earlier that day.

"If I'd known that you would be so much trouble, I'd never have sold you that vodka," Duke complained. "Should have stuck with the wine Jeff stole from his parents' restaurant. Damn, you're heavy. How much have you been drinking?"

"No more than you," Nathan said, affronted.

"Yeah, but this isn't my first time. I'm guessing it's yours. Did you even eat any supper?"

"I had some sandwiches. Dad's working."

"Sandwiches. That's great." Duke pulled him along a little further, but then they both stumbled and Duke hauled him off to a patch of grass on the side of the road, where they stayed to rest for a while.

Nathan lay down and looked up the sky, which lurched and heaved much like that Van Gogh painting. Bits of it seemed to be getting closer. "I'm gonna fall off the earth."

"You're really not."

"And never mate." His head didn't like to be moved, but he glanced at Duke from the corner of his eyes. "You don't love me," he said accusingly.

"Jesus, Nate..."

"You don't love anyone. You go through them like... _rubella_ and you don't love them. Like Becca, tonight."

"Becca's just a bit of fun. She knows that."

"Or Jeannine," he continued. "Or Julia, if you've even bothered to notice her. I don't even know what happened with Kenny Edwards."

"It's a bit more complicated than that," Duke said, pulling his knees up. It seemed like he was frowning, but it was hard to tell from this angle.

"Oh, what?" Nathan scoffed. "Like they dumped you?"

"You say that like it couldn't happen."

Nathan folded his arms under his head and sighed. "I love you," he said at the night sky. "I love you so much it hurts, and I never know when you're gonna dump me. Every day I think this is it, this is where the 'bit of fun' ends and I'll never get to be with you again, kiss you again, blow you..."

"For fuck's sake, Nathan." Duke untangled his legs and moved over, elbows on either side of Nathan's body and those deep brown eyes mournful and hungry at the same time. "You're the only thing worth a damn in this shitty town. In this shitty _life_."

Fingers brushed through his hair, and then Duke's mouth was on his, soft and tender like never before. It was what he'd been waiting for all night, and it felt divine. He met the kiss, broke it and kissed another spot, Duke's mouth on his face, his neck, further down the chest and then back to the mouth again. As good as it felt at first, Nathan also became increasingly aware of his spinning head and queasy stomach. The sensation of Duke's tongue in his mouth triggered his gag reflex, and he pulled back, groaning.

"I don't feel so good."

The alcohol rose up in his mouth to prove his point, and Duke helped turn him aside as he puked on the grass.

"There you go, get it all out," Duke muttered, rubbing circles on Nathan's back. "All done? You stupid bastard. Okay, let's get you back on your feet and on your way. Make sure to drink some milk before you go to bed."

Nathan laughed. "What are you, my mom?" Standing up made it easier to catch Duke's gaze. "Did you mean that?"

"That you're a stupid bastard? You bet."

"That I'm the only good thing in your life."

Duke looked away. "Come on, it's not much farther."

That was a lie if there ever was one, but somehow they made it all the way home – or at least to the corner two houses away, where Duke leaned Nathan against the mailbox and asked, "Can you make it back home on your own? I don't want to have to face the barrels of your fathers shotgun."

"He doesn't have a shotgun," Nathan said. "He has a standard issue Beretta. And a Glock, but he hates that one."

"Well, that's so much better. Are you okay to go?"

Nathan straightened up. Some of his dizziness had worn off after he puked. "Yeah. I'm fine."

Through careful balancing, he made it the last couple of blocks home, pretty sure that Duke was still watching from a distance, and by some kind of miracle he also managed to find his keys. Unlocking the door was another matter, and by the time he was finished with that and had stepped inside, his dad was standing on the stairs, expression hidden in shadows but clear from his stance. Nathan dropped the keys on the floor and sighed.

"Fuck," he muttered under his breath.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" Dad asked.

Nathan had no idea what to say for himself. His head was nowhere near up to the task of producing any defence, and his stomach was still doing flips. "I need a glass of milk."

Dad turned on the light, which made Nathan hiss in pain as it hit his eyes. Now he knew how vampires felt.

"You're drunk, it's half past twelve, the woman who was _supposed_ to drive you home has never heard of you, and I was just about to go out looking for you." Dad walked down the stairs with too heavy strides and frowned at Nathan. "Did you at least get the girl safely home?"

"What girl?"

"The one who gave you those hickeys. Janice, or whatever her name was."

That made Nathan laugh helplessly, because Jeannine would never look twice at him, and Dad thinking that there was a girl out there was infinitely preferable to the truth, the glorious truth that Duke Crocker had left his mark on him. "There's no girl, Dad."

"Don't lie to me."

"I'm not. There isn't."

"Now, you listen to me, son, if you've left some poor girl out there to make her way home alone, or she's still at that party..."

"Dad. Dad, I'm serious. No girl."

"Where does that Robbie live?"

The demand sent Nathan into another burst of giggles, at the thought that his dad still believed that the party was at Robbie's. With a final "We'll talk about this tomorrow!" Dad stormed out of the house, and Nathan went to find that glass of milk and, eventually his bed.

* * *

When Nathan woke up in the morning, still wearing his T-shirt, he felt even worse than the night before. His head was pounding, and while he'd heard of people who got blackouts from drinking, he had no such luck. He remembered everything, including the fact that he'd have to face his dad's wrath once again.

That was enough reason to stay in bed forever, and he lay back down on the pillow with a groan, allowing sleep to take him over once more. He had no idea how long he slept, but when he next woke up, there was a glass of juice on his bedside table, along with a cold piece of honey toast and an aspirin. He swallowed the aspirin and slowly chewed down the toast with the help of the juice, before deciding that it was time to face the music.

When he got to the kitchen, his dad was sitting there with a cup of coffee in front of him, glaring in silence. No one could glare like Dad.

"Thanks for the... stuff," Nathan said, uncomfortably.

"Sit down," Dad said, and since it couldn't be mistaken for anything but an order, Nathan obeyed. "I found that party eventually. Broke it off, sent everyone home. No one had to go to the hospital, _this_ time. Kids and alcohol don't mix, son. What you did was stupid and reckless, and someone could have gotten hurt. Is that clear?"

Nathan looked down on the table. Many years ago, they used to have a checkered, waxed cotton tablecloth, and he suddenly wondered what had become of it. The table looked so bare without one. "Yes, sir."

"It's another four and a half years before you get to drink. The amount of years until you get to lie to me is never. You're grounded for a week, and from now on, if you go anywhere at all, I will drive you there, I will drive you home, I will _personally_ talk to the parents to make sure that they will be there. If I'm not available to do those things, you don't go. Those rules are from now and until I know I can trust you, and if they seem harsh, you think about last night and everything that could have happened."

"Yes, sir," Nathan mumbled again.

"Where did you get the alcohol?"

"A friend."

"What friend?"

Nathan didn't say anything. He knew he was making things worse for himself by staying silent, but it didn't matter. There was no way that he could sell out Duke. While his dad pressed the question, Nathan sat quiet, staring at the cup marks on the table.

"Son, I've dealt with criminals a lot more hardened than you, and got the truth out of them."

"Yeah?" Nathan raised his head. "Are you going to throw me in jail, then? Rough me up with your nightstick?"

Dad stared at him, ready to say something, and then shook his head and stood up, taking his coffee cup over to the sink to rinse it. "Stupid, stubborn brat."

That finished the conversation, though Nathan wasn't naïve enough to figure it was the last he'd hear of it.


	7. Chapter 7

Keeping quiet became harder as the weekend progressed. His dad hadn't been joking; he knew all sorts of tricks to make people talk, and even though he obviously couldn't use some of them, he used enough to make Nathan doubt his decision. What was the point of keeping quiet? All it took was for one of the other kids who'd bought off Duke to spill the beans, and the secret would be out anyway. It would be just as well to save himself trouble and further time grounded by telling the truth.

But he couldn't. He just _couldn't_, not after he revealed his feelings in the most embarrassing way possible and Duke... well, Duke didn't speak of love, as such, but what he did say was pretty special in its own right, and he'd acted like he cared. In fact, he'd even acted like he cared in front of his friends, which was a complete game-changer. Maybe they'd never get to act like a couple in public, but they didn't have to act like strangers, either. All Nathan had to do was keep his mouth shut, and Monday would be a whole new world.

For the first few hours he didn't even reply when spoken to, but that wasn't something you wanted to try for long with his dad. Even with just brief, necessary phrases, it was hard to keep it up. The Cold War was supposed to be over.

Mom would have sorted it out, he thought, and maybe it was that conversation at Duke's house a while ago that made him even go down that road. But when the whole thing got too much to bear and he escaped up to his room, that was what came to mind. She would have understood if he told her the truth – and not the truth about the alcohol. The truth about Duke. Maybe he couldn't tell his peers, but he could have told his mother.

Or was that just wishful thinking? If he was honest with himself, he didn't know Mom's opinion on the gay stuff any more than Dad's, although the whole Crocker thing had never been a sticking point for her the way it was with Dad.

Since it couldn't happen either way, he chose the happy version and concocted fantasies where she was was endlessly supportive. Since he was already in an area of the completely impossible, he even introduced Duke as his boyfriend, open and unafraid. His imagination didn't stretch far enough to include his dad in those fantasies.

By Monday morning, things had simmered down a bit, and the greeting Dad gave him at breakfast was gruff, but not unfriendly. They only had a few minutes while Dad got ready for work, but Nathan didn't really need more than that. There was only one person whose support he craved, anyway.

Back in school, heading from his locker to the first class, Nathan spotted Duke lounging about at the end of the hallway with Jeff and some guys from senior year. He did his best not to look besotted, but as he passed by, he did dare a shy "hi".

Duke raised his eyebrows, and Nathan registered his miscalculation a split second before Duke slammed a hand down on his pile of books, sending them haphazardly across the hallway floor.

"Nice going telling your dad," Jeff said in a disinterested tone. "Paul's in pretty deep shit now."

"That's what you get for letting a cop's kid in," one of the guys from senior year filled in.

"Can't imagine that's something anyone's gonna try again," Duke said, his eyes cold. Leaning in closer, he sneered, "Even your _girlfriend_ kept her trap shut better."

Helpless rage filled up Nathan's body. Nothing was going to change. Nothing had been improved by Friday's confession, and he'd just made a massive fool of himself, not to mention had a thoroughly shitty weekend for no reason at all. Instead of picking up his books, he clenched his fists and shouted, "_Fuck_ you, Crocker!"

"What's that you say?" Duke challenged, a cruel smirk at the corner of his mouth.

"I never told Dad a damned thing! He found the party himself, that's what cops do, investigate things. The whole weekend, he's been interrogating me about where I got the booze. And you... just... fuck you!"

With that, he stalked off, not even bothering about class – at least cutting school was something he'd become more expert at. Instead, he sat down on a bench by the tennis court, hating the damned place with all his heart for the memories it brought back of the first time he dared approach Duke for a make-out session. What a mistake that had been.

"Hey." Duke came running up to him and stopped by the edge of the court, spreading his hands in an apologetic gesture. "I'm sorry. Thanks, you know, for not ratting on me. And that thing, over there, it was just..."

"It was you showing off to your friends," Nathan said bitterly, and every grievance he'd had for the past few months that through in his voice when he continued: "Like you always do."

"How was I supposed to know?" Duke defended himself.

"You're supposed to _trust_ me," Nathan said, though that was horrible irony, because he couldn't trust Duke, not in the slightest.

"I do."

"Yeah? Do you care to tell them that? Go back and say, hey, Nathan Wuornos is cool, I trust him."

Duke's gaze flicked aside, uncertain. "That's... you know that's..."

"That's too much," Nathan said. "You treating me like a human being where people can see is too much to ask. Well, I'm sick of it. I'm done with this shit. I'm done with you."

"Aw, come on, Nate..."

Even as Duke pleaded with him, the shadow of a smile still lurked at the edges, like he suspected Nathan's decision to be a bluff and had to force himself to be serious. Because nothing about this was ever serious to Duke, was it?

Nathan closed his eyes, breathed deeply and forced away the rage, the confusion, all those tangled _feelings_ that kept popping up around Duke. "I guess now I know how people could break up with you," he said, opening his eyes again. "We're over."

For a moment, it seemed like Duke was about to say something, apologize again, maybe, and Nathan steeled himself, but then that glint in Duke's eyes died and when he did speak, all he said was a flat, "Fine. If that's the way you want it."

He walked away, and Nathan forced himself not to follow. This was better – better than muttered orders to sneak away and drop to his knees in secluded places, better than sitting in Duke's bedroom relying on his grandmother's indifference to keep them safe, better than never knowing if there was anything _real_ beyond layers of deception and haste forced by secrecy. That was the worst of it, not what Duke said in public, but what he didn't say in private.

_The only thing worth a damn..._

Nathan kept telling himself that this was better for the whole schoolday, trying to ignore Duke's empty chair in the classroom, only to give up after the last class and go to find him, even though he wasn't sure what to say. He knew he couldn't continue as things had been, and it didn't matter anyway, since Duke was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he hadn't even stayed the whole day.

The next morning, Nathan did see Duke, sitting on the top of the stairs entangled with a girl. Nothing new, but Nathan's stomach churned, reminding him of why he'd given all this up in the first place. Coming closer, he saw Duke give him a sly look, and a moment later he realized the girl was Katie Hughes. At the sight, Nathan turned on his heel and went to class, doing his best to ignore Duke when he showed up five minutes later. It became easier after the first hour, when Duke stopped trying to make eye contact and started acting as if Nathan wasn't there.

That night, Nathan took the wrinkled sonnets from under the mattress and stared at them. Had they been written with Katie in mind all along, like Jeff had believed? Duke had neither confirmed nor denied the existence of his muse, and certainly never suggested that they were about Nathan. Nathan had been the one to make the assumption, and Duke had let him believe it. Maybe it really had been Katie, or most likely, no one at all, just a way to upset the teachers.

But even if Katie wasn't the muse, then why her? Why now? Was it just coincidence that she was the latest in line? Or had Duke heard Jeff's theories, laughed at them, chosen Katie as a way to deliberately yank Nathan's chain? That was just Duke all over, drawing out Nathan's emotions while refusing to cop to any of his own.

Nathan made a move to tear the sonnets to pieces, but couldn't bring himself to do it. In the end, he just shoved them back under the mattress.

* * *

Sticking to his decision to let go of Duke might have been harder if Duke had spent more time in the classroom, but as summer came closer, his behaviour worsened, with truancy interrupted by suspensions that forced him to stay away from school premises altogether. There was a rumour about a snake in a locker that made the students take bets on whether it would be expulsion rather than suspension, this time, but in the end the whole thing died down from a lack of evidence.

Mlle Devereaux took to saying Duke's name in roll call with a sigh that meant "no, of course not." Mrs. Mannings didn't even pause before proceeding to the next student. Only Mr. Cavanaugh said it as if he expected something else to follow than a shrug or mumbled "suspended" from the others..

And one day Jeff McShaw spoke up: "He's moved to his mom in Portland."

Nathan's head whipped around before he could stop it, and he stared at Jeff, who looked like he'd just said that Duke was home with a cold, rather than that he would never be back, ever.

"Oh," Mr. Cavanaugh said, making a note on his list. "Well, then. Cuthbert, Charles?"

The next day, the janitor moved Duke's desk to wherever. Occasionally someone would speak of him, and Nathan's shoulders would tense, but it got rarer as time moved on. They had tests to finish, and junior year ended with Nathan fourth in his class and with some hope to do even better in senior.

This whole Duke Crocker thing might be something he could get over.

"Hey, Hannah," he said on graduation day. "Do you want to go see a movie this weekend? To celebrate our freedom?"

She smiled at him, but made a small grimace. "I have to ask at home first. My dad's been really restrictive since that party."

"Yeah, mine too. But a movie should be safe, shouldn't it? Popcorn, soda, no alcohol whatsoever."

"I'll ask," she said with a happy nod. "I'd really like to, so if Dad says no, it's no reflection on you, okay?"

"Okay," he said, feeling lighter at heart than he had in months. Love or not, there were things to be said for friends you could trust.

* * *

On the Fourth of July, Nathan went to the police station to see if his dad would be free for celebration or at least give him some money. The answer to both was an order to wait on the bench by the hallway until they could talk about it, but Nathan didn't mind so much. At least the station had ceiling fans, which spared him some of the suffocating heat.

People kept coming in and out of the office, or passing by outside, and he paid very little attention to them and their conversations until he heard a woman say:

"Sorry I'm late, I had to take old Mrs. Crocker to the hospital."

The name Crocker still served like electricity on Nathan's nerves, and he looked up at Officer Hollis, one of the youngest officers on the station. She seemed to consider his father's noncommital grunt an encouragement to continue:

"I got a call for shopliftning, turned out she'd just walked straight out of the store with the groceries, in her nightgown. She didn't even know where she was. At first I tried taking her home, it was only a block away, but that place..." She shook her head. "I don't think anyone had even taken out the trash in weeks. Months, maybe. Does she have any next of kin, do you know?"

"Well, that's for the hospital to find out," Dad said, "but no, no one comes to mind. Not since the kid disappeared."

"Disappeared?" Nathan asked, finding his voice. Both the adults turned to face him with the expressions of people who had forgotten there was someone else in the room. "I thought Duke went to live with his mother."

Dad glared at him in a way that warned him off the Crockers clearer than words, but Officer Hollis, who hadn't been around long enough to be aware of this particular hangup, answered his question.

"The school called her up, and she hadn't heard from him. Not the mother of the older kids, either. Hey, that's a thought," she said to his dad, back to police business. "Both of those daughters-in-law would count as next of kin, wouldn't they?"

"No love lost there," Dad said, "but sure, give their names to the hospital."

Nathan stuck to the topic of conversation that really mattered, dread filling the pit of his stomach: "But where is he, then? If he's not with his family?"

There was that look again, like anything he had to say was just an interruption, which he guessed it was. At least Officer Hollis was a little softer this time, clearly seeing that the answer was important to him.

"He was last seen getting on a bus to Boston. It's out of our jurisdiction now."

"Hollis, the kid doesn't need to know that," his dad said sharply.

"How can you say that?" Nathan asked. "He was in my class!"

Someone must have known, he realized. The McShaws – maybe not that first day, but the police would have asked them questions, or the school would. Jack too, maybe. But if Jack knew, wouldn't Hannah have told him? Maybe she avoided talking to him about anything that had to do with that crowd, considering the cold shoulders they'd been giving him after that party, and the way he'd kept to himself lately. Still, was he really so far away from Duke's life that finding out what had happened to him was just none of his business anymore?

"Isn't anyone looking for him?" he asked.

"Boston police, I guess," Officer Hollis said. There was pent-up frustration in her voice as she continued, "But they'll have lots of cases like this one, and he's nearly old enough to look after himself. Unless the media gets involved, they won't look too hard, and the media only gets involved when it's much younger, blonde little girls with crying parents begging them to come home."

"Hollis, that's _enough_." Dad broke off her rant and fixed Nathan in a steely gaze. "I thought I told you to stay away from the Crockers."

"What Crockers?" he asked bitterly, face heating up. "There's no one left to stay away from, except for that batty old... woman."

"Son, if I ever hear you refer to a senile old person as 'batty' again..."

"He could be hurt!" Nathan knew he was giving too much away by getting so upset, but he was beyond the point of giving a damn. "He could be _dead_."

"He's almost grown up, he'll be fine."

"You don't know that," Nathan accused, having heard far too many horror tales of what happened to runaways to put any trust in reassuring words. "You just don't care."

The chill of the police station no longer held any comfort, and he'd lost all interest in his father's money or company, so he stormed out of there and went home, rushing up the stairs to his bedroom.

Once again, he took out the sonnets, smoothing the wrinkles, reading through those stupid filthy words that had caused so much trouble, and started something so painful and wonderful.

"Please," he whispered. "Be okay out there, wherever you are."


End file.
